May 12

Judges 14

1Now Samson went down to Timnah, and saw a woman in Timnah, of the daughters of the Philistines;

2And when he came back he said to his father and mother, I have seen a woman in Timnah, of the daughters of the Philistines: get her now for me for my wife.

3Then his father and mother said to him, Is there no woman among the daughters of your relations or among all my people, that you have to go for your wife to the Philistines, who are without circumcision? But Samson said to his father, Get her for me, for she is pleasing to me.

4Now his father and mother had no knowledge that this was the purpose of the Lord, who had the destruction of the Philistines in mind. Now the Philistines at that time were ruling over Israel.

5Then Samson went down to Timnah (and his father and his mother,) and came to the vine-gardens of Timnah; and a young lion came rushing out at him.

6And the spirit of the Lord came on him with power, and, unarmed as he was, pulling the lion in two as one might do to a young goat, he put him to death; (but he said nothing to his father and mother of what he had done.)

7So he went down and had talk with the woman; and she was pleasing to Samson.

8Then after a time he went back to take her; and turning from the road to see the dead body of the lion, he saw a mass of bees in the body of the lion, and honey there.

9And he took the honey in his hand, and went on, tasting it on the way; and when he came to his father and mother he gave some to them; but did not say that he had taken the honey from the body of the lion.

10Then Samson went down to the woman, and made a feast there, as was the way among young men.

11And he took thirty friends, and they were with him.

12And Samson said, Now I have a hard question for you: if you are able to give me the answer before the seven days of the feast are over, I will give you thirty linen robes and thirty changes of clothing;

13But if you are not able to give me the answer, then you will have to give me thirty linen robes and thirty changes of clothing. And they said to him, Put your hard question and let us see what it is.

14And he said, Out of the taker of food came food, and out of the strong came the sweet. And at the end of three days they were still not able to give the answer.

15So on the fourth day they said to Samson’s wife, Get from your husband the answer to his question by some trick or other, or we will have you and your father’s house burned with fire; did you get us here to take all we have?

16Then Samson’s wife, weeping over him, said, Truly you have no love for me but only hate; you have put a hard question to the children of my people and have not given me the answer. And he said to her, See, I have not given the answer even to my father or my mother; am I to give it to you?

17And all the seven days of the feast she went on weeping over him; and on the seventh day he gave her the answer, because she gave him no peace; and she sent word of it to the children of her people.

18Then on the seventh day, before he went into the bride’s room, the men of the town said to him, What is sweeter than honey? and what is stronger than a lion? And he said to them, If you had not been ploughing with my cow you would not have got the answer to my question.

19And the spirit of the Lord came rushing on him, and he went down to Ashkelon and, attacking thirty men there, took their clothing from them, and gave it to the men who had given the answer to his hard question. Then, full of wrath, he went back to his father’s house.

20But Samson’s wife was given to the friend who had been his best man.

Judges 15

1Now a short time after, at the time of the grain-cutting, Samson, taking with him a young goat, went to see his wife; and he said, I will go in to my wife into the bride’s room. But her father would not let him go in.

2And her father said, It seemed to me that you had only hate for her; so I gave her to your friend: but is not her younger sister fairer than she? so please take her in place of the other.

3Then Samson said to them, This time I will give payment in full to the Philistines, for I am going to do them great evil.

4So Samson went and got three hundred foxes and some sticks of fire-wood; and he put the foxes tail to tail with a stick between every two tails;

5Then firing the sticks, he let the foxes loose among the uncut grain of the Philistines, and all the corded stems as well as the living grain and the vine-gardens and the olives went up in flames.

6Then the Philistines said, Who has done this? And they said, Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he took his wife and gave her to his friend. So the Philistines came up and had her and her father’s house burned.

7And Samson said to them, If you go on like this, truly I will take my full payment from you; and that will be the end of it.

8And he made an attack on them, driving them in uncontrolled flight, and causing great destruction; then he went away to his safe place in the crack of the rock at Etam.

9Then the Philistines went and put up their tents in Judah, all round Lehi.

10And the men of Judah said, Why have you come up against us? And they said, We have come up to take Samson, and to do to him as he has done to us.

11Then three thousand of the men of Judah went down to the crack of the rock of Etam, and said to Samson, Is it not clear to you that the Philistines are our rulers? What is this you have done to us? And he said to them, I only did to them as they did to me.

12Then they said to him, We have come down to take you and give you up into the hands of the Philistines. And Samson said to them, Give me your oath that you will not make an attack on me yourselves.

13And they said, No; we will take you and give you up into their hands, but truly we will not put you to death. So knotting two new cords round him they took him up from the rock.

14And when he came to Lehi, the Philistines came out, meeting him with loud cries; then the spirit of the Lord came rushing on him, and the cords on his arms became like grass which has been burned with fire, and the bands came falling off his hands.

15And taking up the mouth-bone of an ass newly dead, which he saw by chance on the earth, he put to death a thousand men with it.

16And Samson said, With a red ass’s mouth-bone I have made them red with blood, with a red ass’s mouth-bone I have sent destruction on a thousand men.

17And having said these words, he let the mouth-bone go out of his hand; so that place was named Ramath-lehi.

18After this, he was in great need of water, and crying out to the Lord, he said, You have given this great salvation by the hand of your servant, and now need of water will be my death; and I will be given into the hands of this people who are without circumcision.

19Then God made a crack in the hollow rock in Lehi and water came out of it; and after drinking, his spirit came back to him and he was strong again; so that place was named En-hakkore; it is in Lehi to this day.

20And he was judge of Israel in the days of the Philistines for twenty years.

Job 42

1And Job said in answer to the Lord,

2I see that you are able to do every thing, and to give effect to all your designs.

3Who is this who makes dark the purpose of God by words without knowledge? For I have been talking without knowledge about wonders not to be searched out.

4Give ear to me, and I will say what is in my mind; I will put questions to you, and you will give me the answers.

5Word of you had come to my ears, but now my eye has seen you.

6For this cause I give witness that what I said is false, and in sorrow I take my seat in the dust.

7And it came about, after he had said these words to Job, that the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite, I am very angry with you and your two friends, because you have not said what is right about me, as my servant Job has.

8And now, take seven oxen and seven sheep, and go to my servant Job, and give a burned offering for yourselves, and my servant Job will make prayer for you, that I may not send punishment on you; because you have not said what is right about me, as my servant Job has.

9And Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite, went and did as the Lord had said. And the Lord gave ear to Job.

10And the Lord made up to Job for all his losses, after he had made prayer for his friends: and all Job had before was increased by the Lord twice as much.

11And all his brothers and sisters, and his friends of earlier days, came and took food with him in his house; and made clear their grief for him, and gave him comfort for all the evil which the Lord had sent on him; and they all gave him a bit of money and a gold ring.

12And the Lord’s blessing was greater on the end of Job’s life than on its start: and so he came to have fourteen thousand sheep and goats, and six thousand camels, and two thousand oxen, and a thousand she-asses.

13And he had seven sons and three daughters.

14And he gave the first the name of Jemimah, the second Keziah, and the third Keren-happuch;

15And there were no women so beautiful as the daughters of Job in all the earth: and their father gave them a heritage among their brothers.

16And after this Job had a hundred and forty years of life, and saw his sons, and his sons’ sons, even four generations.

17And Job came to his end, old and full of days.

Acts 20:17-38

17And from Miletus he sent to Ephesus for the rulers of the church.

18And when they had come, he said to them, You yourselves have seen what my life has been like all the time from the day when I first came into Asia,

19Doing the Lord’s work without pride, through all the sorrow and troubles which came on me because of the evil designs of the Jews:

20And how I kept back nothing which might be of profit to you, teaching you publicly and privately,

21Preaching to Jews and to Greeks the need for a turning of the heart to God, and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

22And now, as you see, I am going to Jerusalem, a prisoner in spirit, having no knowledge of what will come to me there:

23Only that the Holy Spirit makes clear to me in every town that prison and pains are waiting for me.

24But I put no value on my life, if only at the end of it I may see the work complete which was given to me by the Lord Jesus, to be a witness of the good news of the grace of God.

25And now I am conscious that you, among whom I have gone about preaching the kingdom, will not see my face again.

26And so I say to you this day that I am clean from the blood of all men.

27For I have not kept back from you anything of the purpose of God.

28Give attention to yourselves, and to all the flock which the Holy Spirit has given into your care, to give food to the church of God, for which he gave his blood.

29I am conscious that after I am gone, evil wolves will come in among you, doing damage to the flock;

30And from among yourselves will come men who will give wrong teaching, turning away the disciples after them.

31So keep watch, having in mind that for three years without resting I was teaching every one of you, day and night, with weeping.

32And now, I give you into the care of God and the word of his grace, which is able to make you strong and to give you your heritage among all the saints.

33I have had no desire for any man’s silver or gold or clothing.

34You yourselves have seen that with these hands I got what was necessary for me and those who were with me.

35In all things I was an example to you of how, in your lives, you are to give help to the feeble, and keep in memory the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, There is a greater blessing in giving than in getting.

36And having said these words, he went down on his knees in prayer with them all.

37And they were all weeping, falling on Paul’s neck and kissing him,

38Being sad most of all because he had said that they would not see his face again. And so they went with him to the ship.